Advocates have gained momentum to beef up the state’s primary antitrust law, but the largest companies in the nation are trying to stop it.
by David Dayen June 29, 2026 (Prospect.org)
A bill to update the antitrust laws in the nation’s most populous state faces a critical legislative hearing this week. At a time when California is among the states being relied upon as a substitute for proper antitrust enforcement, which is moribund at the federal level thanks to Trump administration corruption, advocates say the state must have a full suite of tools to succeed.
Monied interests are working diligently to stop the bill, but it gained important momentum late last week when a key senator signed on. The office of state Sen. Ben Allen, who is running for statewide office to become California’s insurance commissioner, told the Prospect that “the Senator is very likely going to be supporting the bill.” Allen was one of a handful of Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats whose position on the bill was uncertain as of last week.
Allen is roommates in Sacramento with Sen. Henry Stern; they represent nearby districts in Southern California and often vote in concert. Stern has also been considered a swing vote on the legislation. His office did not respond to a request from the Prospect for clarification.
There are 13 members on the committee, 11 Democrats and 2 Republicans. If Allen and Stern support the bill, it likely has enough votes to get out of the committee. Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running for Congress from San Francisco, previously told the Prospect he would support it, and five other Democrats are expected yes votes, with three others undecided, including the chair, Sen. Tom Umberg. As chair, however, Umberg could influence several committee members with his recommendation, so the outcome remains uncertain.
Neither Umberg’s office nor the offices of Akilah Weber Pierson and Angelique Ashby, who are also considered swing votes, responded to requests for comment.
THE BILL, KNOWN AS THE COMPETE ACT (AB 1776), will get heard in the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. It would fix a defect in the state’s antitrust law, the Cartwright Act: namely, that it does not cover single-firm conduct. Currently, the law can only be applied to coordinated conduct by multiple firms to monopolize an industry. But the new language affirms that “it is unlawful for one or more persons” to “unreasonably restrain trade” or “monopolize or monopsonize, attempt to monopolize or monopsonize, maintain a monopoly or monopsony, or combine or conspire with another person to monopolize or monopsonize any part of trade or commerce.” Given that the quintessential monopoly is a single firm, it’s a logical update.
Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry introduced the update in February, which tracks closely the recommendations of the California Law Revision Commission, which assists the legislature with ideas for updating legislation in the state. The CLRC recommendation to add a single-firm conduct provision came after years of study and testimony.
Restrictions on single-firm conduct would allow individual would-be monopolists to be sued under state law. That would include Silicon Valley–based tech firms like Google, Apple, and Meta, all of which have faced monopolization cases at the federal level; Google has been found guilty of monopolization twice. Real estate firms like algorithmic price coordinator RealPage, grocers with local footprints like Kroger and Albertsons (which tried to merge in 2024), home insurance companies colluding to deny fire coverage in the state, and Hollywood studios that could be scrutinized over tying together distribution and production would be at greater risk from a souped-up Cartwright Act.
The COMPETE Act passed the State Assembly easily in May, but the Senate Judiciary Committee has been seen as a location for corporate interests to make a stand. The committee is considered more moderate than the state Senate as a whole.
The California Chamber of Commerce released a letter to Umberg last week with 106 co-signers, lambasting the COMPETE Act as unnecessary, claiming it would sow confusion, chill lawful conduct, and “increase litigation and impose significant cost on consumers as well as all businesses operating in California.” CalChamber is calling AB 1776 a “cost driver” bill, a new category they have been using to group together legislation in an age of inflation. Historically, bills designated “job killers” by CalChamber have died in the state legislature; the cost driver epithet is a similar play.
An analysis of the co-signers to the CalChamber letter tells a somewhat different story than their argument that it puts all businesses at risk, however. Eleven of the co-signers are trade associations for the tech industry, fourteen represent agriculture and food retail, nine represent real estate interests, seven represent finance and insurance, five represent hospitality and entertainment, and another nine represent health care, life sciences, transportation, and manufacturing. These are among the most concentrated industries in the economy.
The talking points in the opposition letter reference activities unique to those industries. It cites “reward programs offered by hotels and airlines,” “discounts provided by pharmaceutical companies,” pharmaceutical and technology patents, and movie studio distribution practices. This aligns with the pharmaceutical industry’s stated claims that new treatments and clinical trials will have to be scrapped if the bill goes through.
“The technology, real estate, health care, and airline sectors represented in the opposition coalition have the most direct and prominent recent antitrust exposure relevant to what AB 1776 would expand liability for,” according to Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel with the American Economic Liberties Project.
Close to four dozen local chambers of commerce and business councils also signed on in opposition. But those groups are made up of small-business memberships who are often in combat with larger firms attempting to monopolize their markets. In addition, numerous small-business groups (including the National Small Business Advocacy Council, American Independent Business Alliance, and Small Business Majority) and local business councils (the state’s Black Chamber of Commerce and local chambers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Stanislaus, Sierra, Sonoma, San Gabriel Valley, Richmond, and the High Desert) are in support.
The Prospect asked CalChamber how it made sure its position reflected the views of its membership. Spokesperson John Myers replied that members “can join policy committees that review issues such as this one” and “are consulted in a variety of ways” during the legislative session.
BIG-MONEY LOBBYISTS HAVE ALREADY added amendments into AB 1776, including exemptions for small businesses and requirements to provide evidence of market power in any liability cases. Predictably, CalChamber has said that the amendments only add uncertainty and continue to put all businesses in litigation risk.
Umberg has endorsed other antitrust bills in the past, including the law that passed last year banning algorithmic price-fixing. He did object to the BASED Act, a separate antitrust bill brought by Sen. Wiener this year that would have prevented self-preferencing by technology platforms. But BASED didn’t have the imprimatur of the state Law Review Commission, which is rarely rejected by the legislature.
The bill has emerged just as California’s attorney general Rob Bonta has led a coalition of state enforcers using federal antitrust laws to fight consolidation on multiple fronts. This has become necessary because the federal government has committed ritual suicide on its antitrust enforcement agencies. Just last week, the new acting head of the Justice Department Antitrust Division, Stanley Woodward, told staffers that he preferred not to go to trial on any case.
The state coalition has picked up the slack. It successfully prosecuted Ticketmaster, which was found guilty of monopolization in federal court. It has blocked a television station merger between conglomerates Nexstar and Tegna. And Bonta is expected to lead a challenge to the merger between entertainment studios Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. (One wrinkle: the private-sector lawyer that the states hired to win the Ticketmaster case, Jeffrey Kessler, has been hired by Paramount.)
Bonta has not spoken out about the COMPETE Act, though advocates and other officials in California have been working to obtain his support, sources tell the Prospect. Bonta’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
If the COMPETE Act makes it through the Senate Judiciary Committee, it would likely get to the governor’s desk. Gavin Newsom has fallen in line with CalChamber and other business groups in the past, and he’s currently fighting a billionaire tax proposal whose top opponent is Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who would likely have a problem with a stronger state antitrust law as well.
But Newsom, who is expected to run for president in 2028, has been making several moves in the antitrust space. He asked for increased funding for enforcement amid the more prominent role of state attorneys general. And this week, former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Rohit Chopra begins work in Sacramento as a Newsom appointee, running a new consumer protection agency in the state. Perhaps political ambition can work for the good of Californians this time.
Before you go.
I hope that you found this article interesting and thought-provoking. The reason we’re able to publish stories like this — free of programmatic ads and never behind a paywall — is because readers like you step up to support our work.
The Prospect doesn’t answer to advertisers or billionaire owners. We answer to you and to our commitment to pursuing the truth, wherever that leads us.
Independent, reader-supported journalism is critical at a time when the free press is under assault.
If you believe this kind of reporting should exist and remain free to read, we hope you’ll consider chipping in. Every contribution, however modest, makes a real difference.
David Dayen
Executive Editor
Related
Meta Is a Monopoly Even if TikTok Can Compete
Organized Money: Why Farmers and Filmmakers Both Face Monopoly
Organized Money: The Live Nation Case
March 16, 2026
David Dayen
David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller. He can be reached on Signal at ddayen.90. More by David Dayen
